This is a repost of my first blog entry on January 23, 2012! I have many new followers, so this is a great opportunity to get to know me a little better!

My name is Tim Mushey, and those who know me well call me “Moosh”. I have decided to start this blog with a “Get to Know Me” post so you will be able to understand where the inspiration for this content came from!

I have loved to lead, motivate and inspire others for as long as I can remember. I have often been told that I have the gift of gab, and always have something to say. One of my groomsmen described me best to the guests at my wedding,

“All you have to do is say hi to Tim on the phone or in person, and next thing you know, you have all the updates on the latest TV shows, sporting events, bands and current events. Speaking to him is like flipping channels with a remote control.”

And he’s right! I’m passionate about many things in life – music, sports, my family, friends and work – and I love to share information with everyone! I believe that if I had not battled a stuttering problem all of my life, I would have a career in TV sports broadcasting in some capacity. I often envisioned myself as a sports anchor growing up!

As the son of two teachers, education has always been important to me. I achieved a Bachelor of Commerce Honours degree at the age of 22, and with my first “real job”, was managing a car rental branch by the age of 24. I took a little break after two and a half years in that fast paced business to travel to Australia and New Zealand. I was nervous leaving my family and friends, but a good friend of mine quit his job to do the same thing a few months before, and I thought that was an incredible idea! I ended up travelling for over 7 months, and the experience was better than I could have ever imagined. I made many life long friends from all over the world on that journey, and even managed to squeeze in some work experience selling encyclopedias – true story!

When I returned home in 1999, my career path lead me to outside sales and I have never looked back. It did not matter if I was selling mattresses, credit reports, electrical products, corporate parking programs or photocopiers, there was one commonality – I loved to sell! I had an exciting opportunity to manage a team of 10 reps and support staff with about 40% coverage of Canada in 2007, but changes occurred simultaneously within the organization, and I ended up declining the offer. To this day, I think back to what might have been, but deep down I know I made the right decision for my career and family. Being a Sales Manager was my dream job for many years.

Throughout the years since I completed my degree, I’ve realized that university was just the beginning of my education.So much of my success in sales didn’t come from what I’d read in text books, it has come from what I have learned in the field. Each role, and each account specifically has challenged me to grow each day. I have a wealth of knowledge, tools & systems that I am eager to share with others in sales, and those considering it as their profession in the future.

The internet has provided me with the ability to broadcast all over the world now. If I had affected lives in my own communities over the course of my life, why could I not affect lives everywhere in the future? I have learned to manage my stutter, and even though I still have to work on it daily, I am now ready to get in front of the camera, feel confident, and once and for all lose the words “self-conscious” from my vocabulary!

I hope you enjoy this blog. It truly comes from the heart, and was an absolute pleasure being involved in all aspects of its creation and its ever-changing content going forward!

WordPress has a very cool feature that sends a “Year In Review” summary of all the activity on my blog.

I have always been open about how things have gone with my blog and social media presence, so this is a FANTASTIC opportunity to share my results with you.

If you have any questions, please leave a comment or email me at TimMushey@gmail.com

Have an incredible week, and thanks for making 2013 a very memorable year!

Here’s an excerpt:

The concert hall at the Sydney Opera House holds 2,700 people. This blog was viewed about 15,000 times in 2013. If it were a concert at Sydney Opera House, it would take about 6 sold-out performances for that many people to see it.

Just before Christmas last year we found out that our wonderful dog Chase had terminal cancer and only had a few weeks to live. Although we were quite upset, he had come through major health issues the previous year so we were not surprised. My wife and I agreed to keep him as long as he was doing fine, and as soon as he showed signs of a drop off, we would put him down.

I tried to play the “he’s just a dog card”, but that did not work. It was a very difficult time when he took a turn for the worst. We scheduled an appointment at the vet the next day. The following afternoon, my whole family was out, so I had a chance to sit with him on our deck.

It was an abnormally mild January day for Northern Alberta, which allowed him one last chance to hang out in the yard that he loved so much. He was not able to chase the squirrels like had had done hundreds of times before, but he was able to lie there as I stayed close.

As I sat with him and shut off the world around me, I stopped everything that I was doing, looked around at the place that he had called home for so many years, and just listened to all the sounds around us. I had not been in that relaxed a state for what seemed like months, and was able to fully disengage from the hustle and bustle of life to be in the moment with him. I became so relaxed that I actually fell asleep with him on the deck for one of the last hours of his life!

I reflected upon this event a few weeks after he had passed, and thought fondly about our time together in the yard taking it all in. We get so wrapped up getting through the day that we don’t take enough time to stop, look and listen. I can’t remember the last time I just sat with Chase in the back yard and hung out. There were always other things happening that seemed more important than just being with him.

Perhaps you may want to:

Cut back on your workload to spend more time with family, friends and even pets

Reduce your outside commitments so you can have some “me time”

Take up a hobby again that you have been unable to keep up with because life got in the way

Connect with people that you have not corresponded with in a long time

and…
Stop, look and listen to everything around you. Take a breath and be thankful for everyone that you hold dear, and focus more on them. You never know how long they will be around for!

Many of us are trying to stand out from the crowd and do “out of the ordinary stuff”. Heck many of us are trying to do ordinary stuff but still get noticed.

Like delivering beer to people’s seats at a baseball game.

There is no way to stand out from the crowd doing that right?

WRONG!

I had the pleasure of attending a Chicago Cubs exhibition game in April of 2011, and did not realize how much of a treat I was in for from watching a beer vendor work. His coverage of our section immediately caught my attention! He was more charismatic, more outgoing, more energetic, and more fun to watch than any other beer concession worker than I had ever seen before. I caught myself watching him work more than the game itself!

But that was not even the best part. When he left our section for a bit, I followed him and we had a bit of a conversation. I was captivated by his stories of working in the industry for many years. When I left with my drinks, he gave me his “business card”. It was a laminated baseball-like card with his picture on the front working at a game. On the back it had all of his “statistics”. By statistics I mean all the venues he had worked at during his career, and events that he attended.

I still have his “business card”, and look at it from time to time to remind me what it truly means to have a well-developed personal brand.

What do you do to stand out from the crowd?

Where do you know that you can improve to increase your exposure?

Developing your personal brand is not a “when I feel like it” thing. It should be ongoing. Daily if possible.

Be memorable, be engaging, be caring and for goodness sake have some fun!

I have been lucky enough to work out of a home office for 11 of the last 13 years. The two years that I had an office to report in to, I would get stuck in traffic daily. It gave me many opportunities to look at other people’s faces, as their days were off to very “slow” starts too.

Some looked sad; others looked angry or frustrated, some had blank stares or even looked dazed. On occasion, some were smiling, while others where actually singing! It blew my mind how many people looked unhappy though. Is it realistic to believe that all of them looked that way because they were unhappy going to work? Of course not. Some must have been dealing with other issues too (some were of course frustrated by the continual traffic jams).

Most studies report that 7 or 8 out of 10 people do not like their jobs! One study in the sales profession showed that more than 50% of people should not even be sales at all! Are you one of those people getting out of bed dreading the next 8 to 12 hours every day?

Internet marketer Gary Vaynerchuk changed his entire career path because he was only 99% happy in his situation at the time. To me, that was an incredibly powerful statement. As people become more and more unhappy with their jobs over the months, years or even decades, it is like they are sinking further and further into quicksand. The more unhappy they get, the deeper they sink. On the odd occasion that they try to change jobs, they try a bit, then just stop trying all together.

People typically want to make the switch, but “life gets in the way”. A job search gets put on the back burner. Others lack confidence, and don’t feel that they are good enough to have a shot at “career satisfaction”. Too many people settle for the status quo, and don’t take action. Some stay in a career that they just don’t like, becoming a “work robot” completing the same repetitive tasks at nauseum, for what seems like an eternity.

The next thing they know, five, ten or 20+ years have passed, and then wake up one day saying, “What the heck am I still doing here?” I can tell you from experience that being comfortable in a role that “pays the bills” does not equal happiness. Not even close.

When you are in love with your career, you should rarely be counting down the minutes until the end of the day, week, or until holidays start. I had a manager tell me that you should be excited to go to work, from the moment your feet hit the floor each morning. So many people over the years have said that “every day should feel like a Saturday”, or “your work should not feel like a job”.

It can be a good practice to check in with yourself now and then.

How happy are you with your career?

Is it heading in the direction you would like it to?

If you feel “sunk”, the good news is you can always change your path going forward.

It was April of 2011, and I had been writing for some time. As I reflect back now, it was well over a year that I was carrying around a notebook and writing about sales, sales management and leadership. But I was feeling lost. It felt like I was stranded on an island, wondering if my message would have meaning to anyone else. I was quickly coming to the realization that Google was “letting me down” when I needed it the most.

What I mean by that was I was having trouble finding out what I really wanted to know about sales and who the key players were. I wanted to connect with influential people in the industry, but just did not know how. Then I saw a commercial from the website www.ancestry.com and it inspired me greatly. Their tagline was,

“You don’t have to know what you are looking for, you just have to start looking.”

I was pumped up! I was going to dig deep online and search for influential people who were doing similar things do what I wanted to be doing.

Paul McCord’s fantastic website and blog not only provided great value for me, but he also had a “Blogroll”. For those who do not know, a Blogroll is a listing of favourite blogs that the author follows. It was like I had won the lottery! Many of the influential sales leaders that I follow today are on that list, and I have thanked Paul personally for enabling me to connect with a great group of people. I immediately started to follow their blogs, but it was time-consuming.

Fast forward a few weeks, and I was visiting an account for work. One of the employees was on Twitter and enjoying it a lot. I made fun of her a bit, and stated that I did not need to know every little update of celebrities and regular people. She said that I had it all wrong, and gave me a quick tutorial. I was very impressed and kicked myself that I had not joined sooner!

After work that day, I rushed home and feverishly started searching for people who I had recently discovered in the sales space. Many or them were actually on Twitter! I started to follow them. The first thing that I noticed was the time savings for following blog posts and other valuable content. As an example, if I was following ten blogs and had to go to each of their pages on a regular basis, it would take a long time. But if I was following them on Twitter, they were all updating their profiles with new tweets and I could see what was new in a fraction of the time. That was awesome!

As I progressed and became a daily Twitter user, I realized that the social interaction was becoming very beneficial to me as well. I was having a blast, and contributing daily! I must admit, trying to get my point across in less than 140 characters was a challenge, but I learned to adapt. As the list of people I followed quickly grew, I proceeded to group them in to sub lists, to keep each list of people to follow a manageable size.

LinkedIn was a website that I had previously used for job searches. I soon realized that it was much more than an HR platform. I started to connect with people in the sales space, fellow entrepreneurs, and old friends! I have now connected with close to 900 people, and am looking to add to my network daily.

Starting a Facebook fan page and joining Google+ a few months ago has provided me with other platforms to share my message on.Internet marketing leader Gary Vaynerchuk put his spin on social media during an interview with Tony Robbins once. He was posed the question about where people should be connecting with social media. His answer was a very emphatic “ALL OF THEM”. His explained the point with this analogy….

“If you were invited to several important business mixers, would you attend all of them, or just one?”

If you are attempting to spread your message to as many people as possible, the correct answer is all of them of course!

Social media has changed my life. I now know others are interested in what I have to say (which is an incredible feeling). I post my content in all the social media outlets mentioned above!

If you are looking to connect with people in your areas of interest, social media is certainly an incredible venue to do so. If you are looking to take things a step further and start, sustain and eventually grow a business, it is a must!

Most of you reading this are already connecting on social media, so congratulations! But please consider your connections that are on the fence, and send them the link of this blog post! It changed my life, and will hopefully change theirs too.

One last thing… if we are not connected on social media, I would love if you joined me at:

“You miss 100% of the shots that you don’t take” – Wayne Gretzky, ex National Hockey League Super Star.

My sales spin is,

“If you don’t ask, there is no chance that you will get the answer you want”.

Confidence in the sales profession is paramount to success, but does not happen over night. If you are not in sales, please keep reading. This post has merit for whatever you may be “selling” in your personal or professional life. We have all been selling and negotiating from the moment that we could speak as toddlers!

Confidence allows people opportunities in life that they may not experience if they are tentative and uncertain. When people feel good about themselves, are not afraid to ask questions and involve themselves in potentially challenging situations, they will generally like the outcomes.

Do not mistake confidence for arrogance though. I have seen both, and one is very appealing in business and personal interactions. The other… well not so much!

When you combine confidence with most (or all) of the characteristics below in sales and/or life, very cool things can happen!

Driven to succeed

Persistent

Diligent

Independent worker and thinker

How did I know if somebody would make it in sales?

I have seen a lot of outside sales reps (retail reps too) come and go during my career. It took me a few years to really get a sense of what the signs were if they would succeed. I was quite certain most of the time, after our first couple of meetings.

What typically tipped me off?

How they carried themselves (do they have a bounce in their step?)

Dressed neatly (not necessarily the most expensive clothes) and cared about how they looked

Solid handshake

Maintained good eye contact

Engaged well in conversation

Wanted to learn / Inquisitive

Enthusiastic / Excitable

Personable / Outgoing

If you take a moment to digest that list, many of those attributes can be directly related to being confident. Imagine how different that list would be if you did not feel good about yourself and your abilities?

I urge you to start networking with people who are working towards similar goals if you are not already. It has become common knowledge that you start to portray similar characteristics to the 5 people who you are the closest with. Work on feeling more confident in areas of your personal and professional life that you don’t feel as comfortable in as soon as possible.

For me, getting up in front of crowds to speak was frightening for many years due to my stutter, and now there is nothing I would rather do. It was a long road, but I am glad that I am getting closer to where I need to be thanks to a strong support group of family, friends and Toastmasters.

Confidence does not happen over night, and you cannot push a “magic button” to change how you feel about yourself and your abilities. If you don’t try, you will never know what the outcome could have been. Once you “flip the switch” to knowing you will succeed, and not being afraid to fail, you will see positive changes in your life.

Would love if you “liked” my Facebook page at: www.facebook.com/SellLeadSucceed

Recent Posts

Categories

Learn more click ”pic”!

Dynamic and energized sales rep, mentor and leader since 1999. This blog will be about sales, social networking, personal branding, leadership, music and having some laughs! Don’t be surprised if I mix it up on occasion though, and talk about something totally different! I thrive on being part of successful, forward thinking teams. I am ready to go from the moment my feet hit the floor each morning, with the expectation that new adventures will be coming my way. It is rare that there isn't a smile on my face, as I take it all in, and have some fun along the way!